Teaching Philosophy
I structure my teaching around four beliefs:
- Match instruction and assessment to course goals
- Engage students' personal and situational interest
- Provide structured frameworks and cognitive models
- Create reflective practitioners
If you are interested in how I bring these beliefs into my teaching, please email me for my teaching statement.
Good reading in Software Engineering
These are general software engineering books which do not focus on a particular technology, but instead discuss engineering principles with real examples. They are all excellent for plane reading.
- Fred P. Brooks Jr. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering Anniversary Edition, 1995.
- Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister. Peopleware, 2nd Edition, 1999.
- Jon Bentley. Programming Pearls, 2nd Edition, 2000.
- Gordon L. Glegg. The Design of Design, 2009. (This is a reprint of the 1969 edition.)
- Fred P. Brooks Jr. The Design of Design, 2009. (Named after Glegg's book above.)
Listed below are several reference books. While you don't want to read this front to back, they are good to browse so you know what's in them, and then keep them on your shelf.
- Gamma, Helm, Johnson, and Vlisssides. Design Patterns, 1995.
(Or the design patterns book of your choice. Get one.)
- Hunt and Thomas. Pragmatic Programmer, 2001.
(There's a whole list of "Pragmatic X" books for specific topics.)
- McConnell. Code Complete, 2nd Edition, 2004.
(More low-level "Thou shalt's" than Pragmatic Programmer, but a lot of people like it.)
- Howard and LeBlanc. Writing Secure Code, 2nd Edition, 2002.
(Another "best programming practices" book, this time focusing on security. We've heard from industry colleagues that it's very insightful if you care about security.)
Some industry mags that you might be interested in:
Some blogs to read. I like these blogs because they aren't just on the latest technology, but the use the latest technology/buzzword to discuss some deeper issue. I don't necessarily agree with the authors, and some of them must be taken with a (large) grain of salt. Go through the archives and see what they have to say.